Gold Coast brewers Black Hops, billed as the least covert operation in brewing, are set to once again make waves when they unveil their latest uniquely concocted dessert beer, Band Wagon, as part of this years’ Great Australasian Beer SpecTAPular (GABS).

GABS is an annual festival for craft brewers from all over Australia to showcase one-off, creative beer recipes and is one of the biggest events on the beer calendar. Having previously created Assault Trifle, a dessert beer and an oyster infused stout called Killpatrick, this year the boys have come up with a beer that they’ve christened Band Wagon.

In short, Band Wagon is a stout inspired by the classic Aussie biscuit, the Wagon Wheel. The thick and robust characteristics of a sweet stout have been infused with marshmallows, chocolate, vanilla, raspberry jam and biscuits to deliver an authentically unique dessert beer. In the words of Eddie Oldfield, one third of the Black Hops triumvirate: “It’s always pretty stressful to get all the ingredients in a beer like this to work together, but we managed to nail it straight up, we could taste all the flavours blending smoothly with this rich, slightly sweet stout.”

With beer connoisseurs now spoilt for choice when it comes to left field beer options, is this a Band Wagon worth jumping aboard? Says head brewer Michael ‘Govs’ McGovern; “The past few years at GABS has been all about dessert beers, almost to the stage of it becoming a bit of a cliche. So we were originally tempted to come up with something totally different, but then we thought, what the hell, let’s jump on the band wagon and give them a real-deal dessert beer that they won’t forget in a hurry!”

Team Black Hops are hitching their wagon down to the GABS Melbourne event, from 19 – 21 May, to unleash Band Wagon upon the public. Having scored with their beers at previous events, Black Hops’ Dan Norris is excited by the potential of Band Wagon making an impact this year; “We’re all really pleased with how the beer has turned out. It will also be the first Black Hops beer to hit the international market (for the Auckland leg of the event) which is exciting! I think that another top 10 GABS finish is not out of the question”

The remainder of 2017 promises big things in the world of Black Hops, with the boys looking to consolidate their first 12 months of brewing operations, expand into other parts of Australia and continue to deliver a top shelf array of fresh beers in cans, bottles and on tap.

About Black Hops Brewery

Black Hops Brewing is 3 mates making craft beer and sharing everything they learn along the way. After discussing a concept over beer at the pub, Dan, Eddie and Govs set off to make their first beer, the Eggnog Stout. Once the pilot brew batch was out, their attention quickly turned to doing a proper commercial brew. Within a few months they had their Eggnog Stout out in bars and got to work on building their own brewery.

In 2015, they brewed the world’s first official Call of Duty beer, a Midnight Pale Ale. In 2016, they successfully raised $17,000 via a crowdfunding campaign to become the first Aussie brewery to launch via crowdfunding. They opened the doors to their own brewery and taproom in Burleigh Heads in June 2016.

The boys have been very active in sharing the Black Hops story via blogs, podcasts and on social media, so be sure to look them up!